[jevoten]

> The new campaign, however, is entirely focused on the argument that improved encryption would hamper efforts to tackle child exploitation online.

I bet cars and homes without microphones and cameras spying on their residents also hampers their efforts to keep children safe - are those next on the chopping block? They're already spying on near every street corner, after all.

Funny how they never say "Technology has given us all this extra surveillance capability, you can reduce our legal powers somewhat to compensate" - it's always "People have some tiny scrap of privacy left - we must eliminate it, or terrorists and pedophiles win!"

[pueblito]

In the US, all new cars are required to have anti impaired driving tech installed by 2026, which I’m really certain will involve a camera… all cars come with microphones already built-in. So really they just need to get in your home - that’s what 802.11bf will do.

[mattlondon]

> They're already spying on near every street corner, after all.

Citation needed.

[jevoten]

One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveill...

I'll leave it to you to estimate how many people live per street corner, on average.

[foldr]

For the UK government to be “spying on every street corner”, these cameras would have to be hooked up to some kind of central system. They’re not (and indeed most are privately owned).

[jevoten]

Don't forget to count automated license plate readers, too: https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/48/4865.asp

And in the context of a crime investigation, all those private cameras will have their recordings looked at by the police - though I concede "spying" is too harsh a word for that.

[foldr]

>And in the context of a crime investigation, all those private cameras will have their recordings looked at by the police

This might happen in a parallel universe where the police were well resourced and competent. In reality, they rarely bother to access CCTV footage. It's not a particularly quick and easy process.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/met-police-fail-to-sol...

[stjohnswarts]

Said surveillance is available at a moment's notice and without a warrant. Just because they can't do the show "24" level of surveillance doesn't mean it's not bad, real bad, out there for someone who just want's to live their life relatively unscrutinized. Can't really believe anyone on HN is standing up for 24 hour surveillance with cameras.

[foldr]

Private individuals and organisations are not obliged to give their surveillance footage to the police without a warrant. There's no centralized system, so the data is not in any way available 'at a moment's notice'.

>Can't really believe anyone on HN is standing up for 24 hour surveillance with cameras.

As explained in the guidelines, there's a broad range of opinion on HN. However, I wouldn't say I'm 'standing up for' it. I'm fairly ambivalent about CCTV. I don't think it makes a large amount of difference, either positively or negatively. I do, however, think it's important to be accurate about how (un)sophisticated and (in)effective the surveillance apparatus actually is.

[jevoten]

I only have information on the US, but warrants don't offer much protection:

https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liber...

[frickinLasers]

https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by...

Holy crap, the US has more cameras per capita than China, according to this. The UK is a somewhat distant third.

Though I think a distinction should be drawn between government-operated and commercial surveillance.

[godelski]

Per Capita is probably the wrong metric to use here. This isn't just limited to cameras but you don't need a single camera to track a single person. The more population dense an area is the higher efficiency a single camera can have.

Just think about it in this manner. If you have a house and you set up cameras that monitor every square inch of the house, does it matter if there is one person in the house (high camera per occupant) or many people in the house (low camera per occupant)? Obviously not. The US is also one of the least population dense developed nations.

Not that we shouldn't be worried about surveillance, but let's use good metrics.

[frickinLasers]

Fair enough. I didn't find a ready source on average camera densities by country, but comparing cities at the link below can give a sense of the difference. London has 399 cameras per square kilometer. Beijing has 278. NYC has 26, so not quite as Orwellian, in terms of cameras at least.

Approximate Populations, per wikipedia, for reference:

  London:   9 million  
  Beijing: 21 million  
  NYC:      9 million
  

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-top-surveillance...

[barcoder]

Just take a walk down any British town street. If you can't physically do it there's always Google Street View

[dan-robertson]

I think complaining about ‘think of the children’ arguments is bad because:

1. These arguments appeal to people and making fun of them makes you sound like an ass. If your goal is to just complain to your in-group then I suppose that’s fine, but it won’t convince many people outside.

2. The arguments are true to some extent. CSAM online is a big thing, it’s hard to combat and seems shockingly common. (Though I’ve not worked for a big internet company that is likely to interact with this problem so this is all second hand). We are fortunate to mostly not be exposed to this part of society.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t support e2ee, but it does mean that it’s unfair to dismiss these arguments as a secret ploy to spy on your communications and unrelated to any actual problem.

[jevoten]

> The arguments are true to some extent. CSAM online is a big thing

As is sexual abuse inside private homes. Any child-protection argument that applies to spying online, applies ten times over to spying at home. How many children are raped each year, because you're unwilling to let a few cameras into your house? We pinky swear we'll only use the video feeds to investigate "serious" crimes.